Field
Aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to an electronic device capable of performing wireless communication.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, electronic devices have been available that include a contactless close proximity wireless communication function such as Near Field Communication (NFC) or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). In close proximity wireless communication, communication is performed between a reader/writer located at one side and an NFC tag located at the other side. In the communication, the reader/writer actively reads out data from an internal memory of the NFC tag or writes data into the internal memory of the NFC tag.
The close proximity wireless communication function is implemented in many portable terminals such as digital cameras, portable telephones, and the like. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-151746 discloses a technique where parameters for Wi-Fi® connection are shared using NFC, thereby making it unnecessary for a user to manually input Wi-Fi® parameters. Some NFC tags installed in such devices allow a CPU of a device to access an internal memory of a NFC tag to rewrite information stored in the internal memory.
In NFC or RFID described above, two devices communicating with each other have their own roles, that is, a target and an initiator. One of features of NFC or RFID is that a device serving as an initiator (reader/writer) is allowed to supply power to a device serving as a target (NFC tag). This enables implementation of a target in a device with no power supply installed therein, such as a seal, a card, or the like. In a case where a target device has its own power supply, it is possible to charge this power supply with power supplied from an initiator device. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-75934 discloses a technique in which power is wirelessly supplied using NFC.
However, in general, the internal memory of the NFC tag does not have a sufficiently large enough capacity to store parameters associated with a plurality of services at the same time. Therefore, it is not allowed to read out parameters associated with a plurality of services by performing a close-proximity operation only once, and thus it is difficult, depending on the situation, to smoothly acquire information associated with a desired service. It may be possible to read out information associated with a plurality of services such that reading out of information is performed repeatedly while rewriting the tag when the target device and the initiator devices are in proximity, thereby making it possible to read out the information by performing a close proximity operation substantially once. However, to rewrite the NFC tag, it is necessary that the internal CPU is in operation. Thus there is a possibility that when the remaining battery capacity is not sufficiently high, and thus impossible to rewrite the NFC tag, the low remaining battery capacity does not allow it to change the service mode to a mode in which power is supplied wirelessly. Also in this case, it is difficult to smoothly read out information associated with a desired service.